Unspoken

  Bryce broke pose to look at Charlotte. “We’re done, Aaron. Thanks.” He took her hands, found they had gone clammy. He stepped down a step and turned so he could be at eye level with her.

  She gave him a weak smile. “Sorry. I don’t know if I’m suddenly hot or simply tired.”

  “Won’t matter. We’ve got plenty of photos.” He kept hold of her hands while Ellie gathered together the train, then helped her off the stairs.

  “I’ll help you change, Charlotte, and get you another bottled water,” Ellie said, taking charge. “The lights are hot in here.”

  Bryce looked over at John as the women left the room. The man was frowning toward the doorway where Charlotte had gone. “That wasn’t heat,” Bryce said.

  John met his look. “No, it wasn’t.”

  Bryce pulled the car into the garage, noted Mitch pulling to the curb, and accepted the fact they were going to have security around for the rest of their lives. He understood Charlotte’s decision to simply let John handle it, to not want to know. The two men John had introduced him to were both like their boss, former military. They’d been part of the security around Charlotte ever since her grandfather showed up in her life. Now they would be around the two of them.

  “Home at last.”

  Bryce glanced over at Charlotte’s soft words, shared a smile. “It feels nice.”

  Ellie had sent the roses and part of the wedding cake home with them, but otherwise pushed them out of the church with a hug and a laugh. She said she and John would handle the wedding dress and other final details. Bryce had wisely stopped for a low-key meal for the two of them on the way home, knowing Charlotte had been too preoccupied to eat much today, but would insist on helping if they were cooking at home. The dashboard clock said it was now twenty after nine.

  “The luxury of not having the wedding on our to-do list anymore is its own form of bliss.”

  “I’m feeling the same.” He came around to open her door, took the flowers, and waited while she retrieved the box with the cake. He unlocked the house door and reset security, still getting used to the upgrades John had installed. Charlotte walked through to the kitchen.

  He tugged at his tie. She was looking for a vase for the roses. Bryce opened a cupboard over the refrigerator and got one down for her.

  “Thanks.” She arranged the roses and set them on the kitchen counter, smiled as she touched the white petals. “They should last a week or so.”

  “I’ll replace them for you, if you like, when they begin to fade.”

  She looked over at him, gave him a thoughtful nod. “For a few weeks that would be a very nice gift.” She took the rose he’d transferred from his tux to his jacket lapel and tucked it in the edge of the vase to reach the water. The rings she wore looked nice together. His bride. He felt more content at this moment than he had been in decades.

  “I think I’m going to enjoy being Mrs. Bishop. It’s a very nice new name.”

  “It sounds good on you.” He gently tucked her hair back behind her ear. “You won’t hear this suggestion from me often, Charlotte, even if I think it, but you’re exhausted—let’s save the conversations for tomorrow. It’s been a long day for both of us.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, I am ready to call it a day.”

  “I’ll lock up.” He reached for her hand. “But first—wedding present number one.”

  She looked at the coin he handed her, then grinned. It was a production error, both sides of the quarter stamped with the face. “A two-front-sided quarter?”

  “For when you want to flip me for something, but want to make sure the answer comes out your way. Use it sparingly, but well.”

  She considered that, nodded, and closed her fist around it. “Thank you,” she whispered. She tilted her head. “How many presents?”

  He smiled. “Seven. I believe in quantity.”

  “As the recipient, so do I.”

  “They’ll show up over the next week. Sleep well tonight, Charlotte.”

  “I will.” She rested her hand on his arm, leaned forward, and softly kissed his cheek. “Good night, Bryce.”

  He stood where he was, absorbing that gesture long after she had gone upstairs. She’d scratched the line “you may kiss the bride” from the service, and he’d been glad, for the nerves she had been feeling had been visible by the end of the service. This . . . he looked to where she had disappeared up the stairs. This had been personal and not driven by nerves. He quietly smiled. Baby steps. He could go a long distance with baby steps if the time was measured in months and years.

  He walked through the house to confirm everything was locked, the security set, precautions he intended to make a habit now that Charlotte was in his home. He was a husband. He already liked the role.

  “Bryce.”

  He looked up from trying to unfasten his cuff link. Charlotte was in the doorway only a few minutes after they had said good-night. “Hey, come on in. Solve this clasp for me, would you?”

  She hesitated, then came into the bedroom, looked at his wrist and figured out how the clasp was stuck. When she had both cuff links in her hand, she turned toward his dresser, saw the collection. She smiled as she slid the links into an open slot.

  “My dad gave me the first set of cuff links when I turned eighteen,” he mentioned. “The card said, A businessman should look businesslike. They’ve been his gifts on birthdays ever since—cuff links or ties.”

  “I like your dad. Can we talk for a minute?”

  He studied her face, catching the strain, feeling the importance that she’d decided to have a conversation tonight, but not sure how to ease the stress other than not to mirror it. “Sure.” He sat down to pull off his shoes. Tossed one into the closet, followed it with the other. She glanced around, then cautiously perched on the edge of his bed.

  “Charlotte, it’s just a room. Get comfortable in here. I don’t have the habit of leaving the bathroom door open or walking around without being dressed. You want to chat for a few minutes, do me the favor of walking in, walking out, not worrying about it. I tend to watch the late news and read for a while at night. You aren’t going to bother me if you want to toss a pillow against the headboard, sit for a while, and offer a conversation topic. I like talking with you.”

  “Maybe another chair.”

  “There are plenty around this place. Choose one and I’ll move it in here.”

  He picked up the pillow on the floor, handed it to her, and pointed to the chair he had vacated. “Not the most comfortable place to sit but yours for tonight.”

  “Thanks.” She curled up in it.

  He tossed more pillows against the headboard. “You ever need to wake me up, I’m not quite as easily startled as you. I won’t mind. But you might have to shake me pretty hard.”

  “You’re going to regret offering that when I wake you up at two a.m. to go check on a noise I’m hearing downstairs.”

  “The ice maker. I can already answer that one for you.”

  He leaned back against the pillows and headboard and studied his wife. He did not know her expressions nearly well enough for his own comfort. “What’s on your mind, Charlotte?”

  “I realized something today, when we were saying the wedding vows . . . for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health . . . I forgot to have a conversation with you. I didn’t mean to avoid it, not have it, I just tangled the subject with other things I don’t talk about and didn’t have it. So I came to apologize.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  She smiled briefly and said, “Maybe you should wait till you hear what it is.” He simply waited, and she rested her chin against her drawn-up knee. “I’m an alcoholic, Bryce. I was sixteen, they were both drinkers, and I could get my hands on scotch, sometimes vodka. I would have preferred pills, but they weren’t available, so I made do. I haven’t had a drink in eighteen years, don’t plan to ever have one, as alcohol is a trigger to memories I do not want to relive. I need you to help make sure the eggnog or
the punch isn’t spiked with something when we’re at a party, even a bit. You definitely won’t like the flashback that taste is going to trigger, and I probably won’t walk away from the impact of it without a hospital stay.”

  “Okay. Apology still accepted.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “Charlotte . . .” He sighed. “That most certainly is the kind of thing you’re allowed to try to forget. Please don’t worry about it. I can help with your request, and I’ll be glad to do so.”

  She uncurled herself from the chair.

  “Please stay.” He motioned her back to the chair. “I don’t want you going to bed on our wedding night with that being the last conversation rolling around in your mind.”

  She sat on the edge of the chair, looking surprised.

  “I don’t mind the hard news. But neither of us need it being the last thing we talked about today.”

  “Okay.” She curled back up in the chair.

  He ran his hand through his hair. Thought for a bit, shook his head. “Stay put. I’m going to go brush my teeth, because I don’t have a single topic at the moment.” He got to his feet, pulled two of the pillows from the stack, and dropped them in her lap. “That chair needs a few of them. How about socks for those bare feet?”

  “I’m okay.”

  He nodded and turned on lights in the adjoining bathroom. He brushed his teeth, peeled off his socks and dropped them in the hamper. He checked the alarm clock out of habit, then made a point of shutting it off. “I’d like your Christmas wish list. Husbands have a notoriously difficult time shopping for Christmas gifts, so you can take pity on me for the first year and give me a list.”

  “My Christmas wish list. In April.”

  He tapped the notepad on the bedside table. “I’ll write it down.”

  She gurgled a chuckle, then full laughter peeled out. She wiped her eyes as she struggled to get control. “Thank you,” she breathed, still smiling.

  She rested her chin on her knee again. “I’d like a pair of shoes, please. Something red and shiny, so I have a reason to go find a dress I like that will match them. I take a size seven, or you can just have Ellie try them on—we wear and like the same shoes.”

  He wrote it down.

  “And I’d like a puppy figurine, something to go on my dresser with the others I have, about three inches tall, and cute, with kind of solemn eyes.”

  “I noticed those.” He added it to the list.

  “I need a new tote bag, canvas preferably, something that can hold a twenty-four-inch sketchbook, with a pocket inside I can zip closed—the twin to what I carry now would be ideal if they still make it. This one has lasted four years and needs replacing.”

  When she didn’t offer anything else, he simply waited.

  “Could you find those cream-filled cakes, the ones with chocolate on the outside? And cookie-dough ice cream.”

  He smiled and wrote it down.

  “That would be a nice Christmas.”

  “Thank you.” He dated the list, added more numbers, then glanced at her. “Would you like my list?”

  “No. Ellie and I like to shop. You’ll like what we find.”

  He smiled at the way she said it. “Okay.”

  He set aside the pen. “Feel better?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were more than lovely today, Charlotte.”

  “Thank you. I forgot the white slippers that went with the gown.”

  “I noticed.”

  She tugged a pillow up to cover her face, peeked around it. “Tell me Ellie didn’t notice I was barefoot.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.” He crossed his heart.

  “If I had sent Ellie to get them for me, the service would have been late, and that would be worse.”

  “I’ll have something to tease you about for fifty years. And if that’s the only thing that went wrong on our wedding day, it was a very nice day.”

  She wrapped her arms around the pillow. “I’m glad we got all the legal paperwork signed. But I’m sorry I asked that we do it at the church after the ceremony. It wasn’t the appropriate place or time.”

  “The venue was fine, because it reflected reality. There was eight billion resting on you as soon as you signed that marriage license. If we’d had a car wreck on the way home . . . Signing the succession documents shifted the mood, but both of us were already feeling the weight of reality. To have not done those documents when we did would have been irresponsible. We got twenty minutes of a nice ceremony, and then got handed the world we’re going to have to live in. I’d say it was appropriate.”

  “We’re going to wake up with the responsibility of it.”

  Bryce nodded. “A few days from now it’s going to get easier to breathe. It’s not right now. I didn’t expect to feel such a weight.”

  “Do you think we somehow bypassed the fun moment, the Oh my, we’re rich, really, really rich moment forever?”

  He smiled. “We did skip it. I think we’ll learn to enjoy what we can do with the money when enough time has passed, when we get over the fact we’re both staggeringly afraid of how much it is.”

  “I had a hard time deciding if a dollar was too much to pay for a soda yesterday. I just stood there looking at the selections, a twenty-dollar bill in my hand, and couldn’t figure it out. Ellie finally put the twenty back in my purse, bought us a fountain drink to share, and then told me I’m supposed to call her when my brain freezes. I laughed and mentioned I’d forget that too if my brain froze.” Charlotte held up her hand to show him her palm. “She wrote down her number. I’ve been afraid to wash it off because I might need it.”

  Bryce held out his hand. “Let me see.”

  She got up from her chair and came over to show him the neat numbers written on her palm. He picked up his pen and added his number beneath Ellie’s. He curled her fingers across them. “A promise. You’ll always be able to reach at least one of us.”

  Her hand quivered in his. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’m turning in for the night. I don’t set an alarm, so you’ll see me whenever.”

  “Sleep well, Charlotte.”

  “I’ll try.”

  The house was quiet. Forty-two minutes after she left his room, Bryce heard her up again, heard the locks on her door pushed.

  He tugged over a pillow and rested his arms across it. He had expected she would have trouble sleeping, this first time in his house, their house now. It still hurt to hear it.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  He had a wife.

  Bryce rested his hands across his chest as he looked at the ceiling and pondered that new reality. He had a wife who was currently treading lightly down the hall toward the stairs. He glanced at the clock. It wasn’t six a.m. yet.

  He was awake, she was on the way downstairs, but he didn’t push back the covers to get up himself. A month from now he would have it figured out, how best to handle the mornings with her—whether she enjoyed company or needed her space, if she was a cheerful morning person or needed the silence and a cup of coffee.

  He didn’t think she was up early today because she was a morning person; he was pretty sure she was up because she hadn’t been able to sleep. A new house, new room, a wedding ring on her finger, the inheritance weighing on her—he didn’t have to wonder if she was feeling the stress of the changes. He’d stay out of her way for a while, let her have the peace and quiet of having the house to herself a bit. The calmer today flowed, the better it would be.

  They were worth eight billion seven hundred million. The fact of it sat so heavy on his chest it took his breath away. It was more daunting than the reality of being married. He thought he could be a good husband. He wasn’t nearly so sure he could make good giving decisions after the first five hundred million. Getting this right was going to matter. He didn’t want her to ever regret her decision to marry him.

  He turned his wedding ring with the pressure of his thumb. He’d watched his dad, and had a good role mod
el for being a good husband. How these first few days together went were going to matter more than the months that would come after them. This relationship would form a strong footing right out of the gate, or it would struggle to find its balance for months. Today mattered. Each day of this week would be important.

  He needed to help her get her studio together today. Most of the furnishings—the chairs, tables, shelving, drafting table—were now in the sunroom that would be her new studio. But having the pieces there was not the same as having the room arranged. Bryce remembered what John had said—she got stressed, she worked. So having the studio together, a comfortable place to work on her art, was a high priority.

  Another priority for today was to choose a comfortable chair to drag into this bedroom, find another one for his office downstairs. He’d known Charlotte for over a year, and the three times she had dropped bombshells on him were late nights while driving, and late on their wedding day. He got the pattern of it.

  He felt a deep sadness for what she had told him, but he had grabbed the significance of the conversation. If he wanted Charlotte to be willing to talk with him about hard things, he’d best give her a safe place to curl up, and encourage her to talk with him, preferably at night.

  He wanted to understand his wife. If he wanted inside her head, into the things she’d never talked about, he needed to create the environment for it. Simple things to start with, such as how the day had been, but create the habit of it. And patience. He thought she’d tell him one day, at least pieces of it, if he was careful to hear what she was risking.

  She’d given him eight billion dollars and asked him to give it away. He was going to give her back something as valuable. He was going to help her heal. Her relationship with God, the memories she never talked about. If it took decades, he was going to help her heal in every way he possibly could.

  He’d learn how to be a good husband—not just in general, but a good husband to Charlotte. He’d figure out a plan for the giving, he’d find the places which both needed the money and would spend it wisely. What he wasn’t going to do was fail.